From automata to tavola rustica

For some whose life is now largely on the net, the existence of the doorman at Tavern on the Green, and his demise, won't mean much. That was then. Don't need doormen on the Web, nor the protocol of subordination that the uniform brought to bear upon every opening of the door.

Lots of rhetorical gestures are equally de trop -- corporate websites, with their elaborate flash "intros" that everyone skips. It is nothing new to note that we want small, speedy, light, functional modes. Use over exchange -- spare the sizzle, just the steak, etc.

The thingliness of dead protocols just makes them more dead, doesn't it? But then there's the return of all that in archives available to all - (those that are "private" are simply JSTORized out of common reality) - e.g., in this magnificent NYPL collection of Abbott photos of New York of the 30s:

"The machines were filled from the kitchen behind." wp

The arc of that time - dazzling technological innovation taking place in a time of impoverishment -- putting mechanical turks behind columbaria of nourishment so as to make the users seem empowered, the workers seem invisible, and the delivery of what was to be consumed appear a sort of humorous point-and-click anticipation of what we now consider pretty nifty technology -- an arc of technological advance which, by 1965, had arrived at a state of seedily dehumanized, tinfoil-hatted industrial inspiration.

Abbott's New York of 1935, at the peak of Horn and Hardartian sheen, looks at us through Manhattan's penury accompanied by a world of human presence - a place of art, and readers, and cats and placid brooms.

Neither the emblazoned Tavern nor the Foodomat seem especially appealing, comfortable, or contemporary, though for completely opposed reasons. But with these guys, I could feel at home.

Oikos

Slide [9] One important element of collapse-preparedness is making sure that you don't need a functioning economy to keep a roof over your head. D. Orlov, via Gifthub.

In Florida, there's an abundance of homes filled with five families trying to make ends meet. And there's an abundance of housing stock, standing empty, waiting to be squatted in, vandalized, or converted to interior agronomics.

Can't wait to see what the market does.

zimbucks too

Next I tried another online micro-job site that posts small jobs requiring a tiny bit (and nothing more) of human intelligence. Sample writing work there? 1000+ word product guides. Pay: $5.00. In 1986 I would have made about $1,000 for that job. In 1999 I would have made $3,000 for that job. Today, some one will do it — maybe not well, but they’ll do it and search optimize it — for five bucks. Jeneane.

De-corporatizing the panhandling panjandrums

(Hokey newspaper headline free of charge)

Just a passing thought, listening to lawmakers' skepticism toward Eminem's neighbors' pleas for moolah: It seems to me that these companies are doomed by virtue of their coming to Congress as corporations. Their arguments reek of corporate interests. If they came as wounded communities (which is in fact what they are) - not just CEO's but workers and families and localities - and if they made the case that this is not about antiquated industries surviving, but about a malleable pile of capital and a group of people in transition, and here's an opportunity to help them out while reshaping GM, Chrysler, and Ford into entities that will genuinely become something else -- hybrid entities involved with life, health, finance, education, infrastructure, optimal safety and resource deployment -- i.e., if they were humble and open enough to consider inviting investors out and bringing people, a broader vision of agencies, and human values in -- they might have a shot at hearts and minds and the big bucks.

Instead of a bank, a community?

Adam Arvidsson & Nicolai Peitersen seem to be thinking on a sufficiently large scale as to perhaps be looking around the bend, past the end of capitalism, with some clue as to what might come after - and what they see coming is not supercapitalism. The book, not yet released, is called The Ethical Economy.

There's a fascinating excerpt here, and a pdf of the Introduction here. See also Phil's post at Gifthub.

An excerpt from the excerpt:

Ethics, Finance, Crisis

These might seem like three terms picked at random. However I would like to suggest that beyond its direct, contingent causes, the current financial crisis is a symptom of the emergence of a new economic system, where value is increasingly based on ethical factors, or on ‘life conduct’. I call this an ethical economy: and I will try to explain why, and how it relates to the current crisis.

a great anthropological question

If it is true that the political centrality of the mass-worker has been replaced by the political centrality of the mass-bourgeois, then a great anthropological question poses itself on the terrain of human labour. 

The ideological hegemony of the Right – your boss’s interest is your interest, and you should do things on your own and not with others – does not stop before the factory gates, just like it doesn’t wait in front of the entrance to the home, where the holy family dwells. It enters, penetrates, invades, conquers, seizing hold of the soul – if there is no body of collective forces that pushes it back, countering it with the reasons of an organised solidarity. The material condition of subaltern labour – whether dependent or autonomous, stable or precarious – must now face up to this politically unprecedented situation, that the middle classes no longer need to be a separate social stratum, because they have become a diffuse democratic mentality. This is an illusory veil which the presence of an alternative horizon, both credible and practicable, has the duty to rend asunder.

But who today denounces the evils of society? 

~ Mario Tronti via Infinite Thought - see also Bad Hugh

I'd love to hear Paulson explain why this isn't a good idea

Andrew Caplin:

In most parts of the country, house prices are plummeting. Families are defaulting on their mortgages and being kicked out of their homes. That's bad news for them, but also for us, because bonds issued on the backs of those mortgages are being bought by the government as part of the Wall Street bailout. The more borrowers who default, the less those bonds -- our bonds -- are worth. Future taxpayers -- our children -- are being condemned to a subprime future.

But there is a way out of this mess. Meet SAM. SAM is a shared appreciation mortgage, [Wikipedia offers some cautionary comment] where the lender and the borrower essentially become stakeholders in the house, and where both profit when a home increases in value. SAM can reduce defaults and loan losses and give us taxpayers a fighting chance of coming out on top.

Here's how: Imagine a family that took out a $200,000 mortgage but can only afford payments on a loan only three-quarters that size. The hole they're in gets deeper when the value of the house falls. Rather than repossess the house the lender can opt to refinance the mortgage with a $150,000 SAM. That way, the lender gets something in exchange for the write-down: a significant share of any future appreciation in the house. So, if five years later, the house is sold into a recovered market for $200,000, the lender would get an appropriate share of that profit.

If we allowed SAM in this country, taxpayers would get a share of the appreciation in any houses that got written down. This would reduce the odds of the homeowner defaulting and increase the value of those bonds that you and I now own.

Tragically, as useful as SAMs could be to our economy, we can't use them. The IRS imposed a block on SAMs nearly 40 years ago. But that block could be lifted with the stroke of the Treasury secretary's pen. Henry Paulson should pick that pen up and save our children from a subprime future.

Courteous gall

James K. Galbraith, Professor of Economics, University of Texas

Excuse me for asking an impolite question.

But did David Walker, Eugene Steuerle -- or Peter G. Peterson himself -- devote even five percent of the vast resources that they have lavished in recent years on the supposed "entitlement crisis" to warning about the impending mess on Wall Street?

Did they write anything about it? Did they speak out against the Bush administration's abandonment of supervisory responsibility in the financial system? Did they protest the massive abuse of unsophisticated home buyers by the loan originators in the subprime sector? Did they comment on "liars' loans," "neutron loans" and "toxic waste"? Were they heard about the risks involved in securitizing subprime loans? Did they foresee that credit default swaps could collapse like a house of cards? Did they caution that the stock market might crash, ruining the private retirements of millions of Americans?

If they did, I must have missed it.  National Journal Online h/t JH

reality-based reality check

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I believe we can find common ground to get something done mumble mumble get something done mumble big mumble mumble bigness, big dick, dickness, mighty bollock of greensnap mumble mumble really frickin big.

Asia calls bushit.

ROBERT KUTTNER: I think the place to start is to recognize why this recession is different from all other recessions. This began and is continuing with a collapse in credit markets, and the collapse in credit markets is, in turn, the result of deregulation gone nuts. And it’s a repeat of a lot of things that happened in the 1920s, where there was too much speculation with too much borrowed money and a complete lack of transparency. The regulators, the public had no idea of what these bonds that had been created out of subprime mortgages really contained, what they were worth. The people who packaged them were not subject to any kind of regulatory scrutiny.

And when it turned out that a lot of these loans were never going to be paid back, the layer upon layer upon layer of bonds and then securities based on the bonds—you know, if you can picture the World Trade Center collapsing floor by floor or you can picture the collapse of the Ponzi schemes of the 1920s, that’s a good—or horrible—analogy. And when you have a credit contraction, it means that banks have less capital against which to make loans, and lowering interest rates doesn’t fix that.

There are two other things that lowering interest rates and an ordinary stimulus package won’t fix. One, you alluded to in your opening comments, Amy, and that’s the collapse in housing prices. At the current rate of decline in housing values, American homeowners—and that’s about 70 percent of Americans—are going to lose $2.2 trillion of net worth this year alone. Well, when you lose $2.2 trillion of savings, you’re not inclined to rush out and do home improvements, you’re not inclined to rush out and buy durable goods. And again, compared to that kind of a loss, a stimulus—and they’re talking about $140–$145 billion, that’s one percent of GDP—that’s a drop in the bucket.

Lastly, this occurs on top of thirty years of increasing insecurity on a whole bunch of fronts: the greater risk of losing your job, the greater risk of having your paycheck not keep pace with inflation, rising energy costs, rising tuition costs, rising health insurance costs. All of the things that make you middle class have become more difficult to attain in the past thirty years. So you’ve got a three-layer cake here. You’ve got this thirty-year history of flat or declining living standards for most Americans, you’ve got this terrible weakness in financial markets, and you’ve got this housing collapse.